Catching a smoke outside a Southern
California hotel (and looking badass
with a single-coil pickup repurposed as
a necklace), blues-guitar virtuoso Eric
Gales reminisces about playing on the same bill
with King’s X years ago. “I never thought that I’d
have the opportunity to open up for them on my
first tour ever,” he recalls. “As a kid, I’d go to see
King’s X, and my head was blown away.” King’s X
bassist and vocalist Doug Pinnick (aka dUg) elaborates.
“Eric opened up for us when he was about
16. My impression of him was the same back then
as it is now: He’s always been a freak of nature.”

Both men have since achieved cult status, and
even though their paths crossed countless times over
the decades, surprisingly they’d never collaborated
on any music until now. “People had suggested it,
but I never really gave it a thought,” says Pinnick,
who is currently working on five separate projects.
“I mean, I get so many opportunities and suggestions
to play with people. It’s not something that I
really think about.”

In 2012, Gales’ label president—the impresario
almost single-handedly responsible for feeding the
shred craze of the ’80s—reached out to Pinnick.
“Mike Varney from Shrapnel Records called me
up one day and asked if I’d be interested in doing
a project with Eric and Thomas [Pridgen, ex-Mars
Volta],” Pinnick says. “I said, ‘Sure, it sounds really
good.’” Soon after the call, supergroup Pinnick
Gales Pridgen was born. “I did it originally for the
paycheck, but after I did it, I went, ‘Wow. That was
a lot of fun. Let’s do it again,’” says Pinnick.

“I was like, ‘Everybody’s done it—now watch
us [expletive] it up,’” says Pinnick. “Anybody can
do that song, but nobody’s done it like we’ve done
it. I thought what we needed on this record was to
have Eric and Thomas do what they do best. I said,
‘Let’s just overkill. Nobody’s gonna tell you that
you can’t—that’s what people want to hear!’ I just
laid back and plugged along and sang, because Eric
and Thomas are really killin’ it.”

Here, Gales and Pinnick tell Premier Guitar what
went into the making of Pinnick Gales Pridgen and
share their unorthodox approaches to their instruments
and gear, including Gales’ signature Two-Rock
amp and Pinnick’s 12-string bass—and the rare pickups
that are the secret to his sound.

Eric Gales plays all of his guitars upside down and lefty, including his signature St. Blues Blindsider.
Photo by Willem Kuijpers

Pinnick Gales Pridgen kicks ass like a
band that’s played together forever. What’s
interesting is that, as cohesive as it sounds,
you’re coming from different musical
backgrounds—Eric, you’re often labeled
a blues-rock guitarist, and Doug, you’re
often considered a bit of a prog-metal
bassist. What was the common ground?
Eric Gales: Man, you know that’s a really
good question. I don’t even know if I have
the proper words to say how or where it
meets together. The one thing I know is
that it does meet.Doug Pinnick: We’re black. That’s what
I think. It’s a 3-piece, all-black rock band.
We haven’t had one of those since Living
Colour. There’s camaraderie between the
three of us because we all came from a
heavy gospel background growing up—not
gospel preaching, but gospel groove. That’s
the thing that I connect with them on more
than anything else, and on our next record
I hope that we can bring that out more.

Did any of the material brought in for
this album take any of you out of your
comfort zone?
Gales: Never. Not for any one of us.Pinnick: Y’know, I never even gave that a
thought. The thing I enjoyed about it was
that Eric just stepped up to the plate. It was
nice to see his eyes light up when we played
some of the songs that I brought in, which
didn’t have “normal” changes. He found
new things to do—and when he did, he
always looked up and smiled. We knew that
we were on the right track.

New York City native Joe Charupakorn is a guitarist, author, and editor. He has interviewed the world’s biggest guitar icons including Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Yngwie Malmsteen, Carlos Santana, Neal Schon, and Dave Davies, among many others, for Premier Guitar. Additionally, he has written over 20 instructional books for Hal Leonard Corporation. His books are available worldwide and have been translated into many languages. Visit him on the web at joecharupakorn.com.

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